Sermon Archive

By What Authority?

by the Reverend Dr. Byron E. Shafer
(Rutgers, September 26, 1999;  26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A)
Exodus 17:1–7 (OT, pp. 70–71);
Matthew 21:23–27 (NT, p. 24; truncated lectionary)

It was just  the-day-before  that Jesus had entered the great city
of Jerusalem, amidst the crowd's cries of "Hosanna!"
He had proceeded directly to the courtyard of God's temple,
where he had cleared it of "business as usual,"
driving out those who were buying and selling
and overturning both the tables of the moneychangers
and the benches of the dove merchants,
those whose purpose for being there
he saw as other-than-prayer.

Immediately afterwards, Jesus had performed
an act that was equally revolutionary, though more subtle:
he had welcomed into his company the blind and the lame,
persons who because of their physical challenges
were ordinarily excluded from the precincts of the temple
and from the classrooms of the teachers.

And then finally, after teaching and healing these persons,
Jesus had left the temple for the day
and had gone to spend the night outside of Jerusalem 
in the village of Bethany.

That was yesterday.

Now, as the episode in this morning's Second Lesson gets under way,
Jesus has returned to the temple and is there teaching the people 
about God and about God's will for humankind. 
Suddenly, some of those in charge of the temple—
the power structure—come across the courtyard
to the spot where Jesus is teaching,
and they confront him face-to-face, asking him,
"By what authority are you doing these things,
and who gave you this authority?"

When those-in-charge ask him this question, they are, I believe,
already certain in their own minds that they know the answer. 
They are, I believe, very much of the opinion that
Jesus is not speaking and acting by the authority of God.
Rather, he is speaking and acting
either solely by his own, all-too-human authority,
or else, in a worst-case scenario, by Satan's.

Now, for us here today the important issue is not what those people
were or were not able to affirm
about the authority underlying Jesus's ministry.
For us here today the important issue is what we
are or are not able to affirm about it.

Are we able to affirm that Jesus spoke + acted by the authority of God + in
such a way as to reveal to us the nature of God + God's will?
Or are we able to affirm only that Jesus was one of those
great sages of the world who have shared with humankind
the fruit of their individual goodness and wisdom, but
whose teachings are only relative in their authority?

And of what consequence is it for how we live  how we answer
this question about the authority by which Jesus lived?

One of the notable Christians of our time is
Sr. Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun from Louisiana.
She is a prominent spokesperson for what is called
"restorative justice," and restorative justice is also
one of the social justice emphases of our own denomination,
the Presbyterian Church.

Sr. Helen is a stellar example of a person who is firmly convinced that
Jesus spoke and acted by nothing less than the authority of God
and that each of us who is a disciple of Jesus is called by God
to nothing less than following Jesus's authoritative way. 

As Sr. Helen understands,
and as we also can understand by reading our Second Lesson,
one of the things Jesus did by the authority of God
was to challenge the powers of this world to act with love
toward those considered the misfits and outcasts of society.
So one of the things to which Sr. Helen devotes her life
is restoring to human decency and goodness and
well-being those who are in prison, particularly
those who are on death row, as you may
remember from the film Dead Man Walking.

And when Sr. Helen speaks, she appeals to the authority of Jesus,
and therefore, of course, to the authority of God.
Appealing to the authority of Jesus, she counsels
that prisons should not focus on taking revenge on wrongdoers
and on meting out retribution to them,
but that instead prisons should focus on providing the kind
of social + educational services that can redeem + restore
wrongdoers, returning them to society as rightdoers.

Sr. Helen would urge us who live in New York City to challenge
the budget priorities established for our prisons by Mayor Giuliani.
For virtually all of the city funds assigned to the prisons
are intended for retribution not restoration.
Take for example the Manhattan House of Detention.
Can you believe that for facilitating the restoration to society
of some 800 inmates, the budget of that jail provides funds
for just one social worker, + the idea of educational courses
is accused of being completely frivolous,
the kind of thing that turns a jail into a country club!

The same inadequate ratio of social workers to prisoners
and lack of educational opportunities exist at Rykers Island.
And did you know that from that facility,
in the middle of every night, around 3:00 am,
a bus load of 30-50 prisoners-to-be-released is driven
to a subway stop, with the only investment by the city
in their successful reintegration into society being
a Metrocard with—wow—2 whole subway fares on it!
Instead of returning people to usefulness in society, this
nightly bus load from Rykers Island furnishes us, among
other things, with a steady stream of new additions
to the corps of homeless sleeping on our city's streets.

Sr. Helen is a prominent advocate for restorative justice.
But Sr. Helen is probably most famous
for her work with prisoners on death row.
And whenever Sr. Helen speaks about capital punishment,
she confidently bases her arguments on the authority of Jesus.
Teaching and working in the name of Jesus, she argues that
society should be imposing capital punishment on
absolutely no one, however heinous their crime,
and that Christians should be laboring for the redemption
and restoration to wholeness of even the worst offenders.

A principal foundation for Sr. Helen's appeal to the authority of Jesus
on this subject is an episode from Jesus's life (John 8:2–11),
which, like today's Second Lesson, takes place in the Jerusalem temple,
and, like today's lesson, while Jesus is teaching
a crowd of people, and like today's lesson, while Jesus
is being challenged by other religious authorities.

A group of these authorities present to Jesus, as he's teaching,
a woman who's been caught in the act of adultery,
and they ask him to pronounce judgment on her.
Should the punishment prescribed in the sacred text,
the religious law, the law of Moses,
that such a woman ought to be stoned to death—should
that punishment be carried out against her, or not?
In Jesus's response, he lays claim to an authority
that is higher even than that of the sacred text,
the law of Moses.
For he offers in place of the law of Moses
his own teaching on the subject.
He says to the assembled leaders and people,
"Let anyone among you who is without sin
be the first to throw a stone at her."

And in response to that teaching
and to Jesus's claim of authority over even the law of Moses,
the people slowly depart, one-by-one, as do also the leaders.  
Only Jesus and the woman are left standing there.
So Jesus says to her, "Woman, has no one condemned you?"
She replies, "No one, sir."
To which Jesus responds, "Neither do I condemn you. 
Go your way, and from now on do not sin again."
Restorative justice!

Sr. Helen teaches that when, in this passage, Jesus speaks against
capital punishment and for the woman's redemption + restoration,
Jesus is doing so by the authority of God, and that, therefore,
his example is to be followed by all his disciples.
She teaches that ascribing authority to Jesus's words + deeds
should have consequences for how we live our lives.
Like Jesus, Christians should oppose capital punishment.

Now, many of us in this sanctuary first learned something about
the story of Sr. Helen from the great movie Dead Man Walking,
directed by Tim Robbins and starring Susan Sarandon.

What you may not know is that despite the altogether positive light
in which this film depicts Sr. Helen and her work, its director,
Tim Robbins, is one of the many people in American society who
do not accept the fundamental principle of Sr. Helen's life,
that she is to model her words and deeds on those of Jesus
because his words and deeds carry nothing less than
the authority of God, the creator of the universe.
(For this and what follows, see Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace
[New York: Riverhead Books, 1998], pp. 239–240.)

Tim Robbins was interviewed at the Berlin Film Festival
about his understanding of Sr. Helen and her work,
Would that he had been able to say something like,
"She's a dedicated Christian who's seeking to follow
the will of God communicated with such authority by Jesus."

No, Robbins didn't say anything like that.
Rather he offered this fuzzy, rambling statement:
"I believe in É er É
that there are people who are on earth [like her]
who live highly enlightened lives
and who achieve a certain level of spirituality,
in connection with a force of goodness.
And because these people have walked the earth,
I believe that these people have created God."

I value the movie highly, and I recommend that you rent the video,
but it saddens me deeply that the director Tim Robbins caught
so little of the Spirit that is the bulwark of Sr. Helen's life.
I'm sure that Sr. Helen would be astonished, even horrified,
by the notion that, she is somehow 
one of the enlighted persons who have "created God" by
embodying some nondescript "force of goodness."

By what authority does Sr. Helen do the things she does
and say the things she says?
I'm sure that she would be the first to say that she acts and speaks
by the authority of Jesus, not her own.

And by what authority did Jesus do the things he did
and say the things he said?
Well, it is a bedrock affirmation of Christian faith
that Jesus spoke and acted by no less an authority
than the authority of God.

What characterizes a follower of Jesus,
what characterizes a Christian like Sr. Helen,
is this clear affirmation:
Jesus embodied the authority of God;
therefore Jesus is the model for my life.
Jesus embodied the authority of God;
therefore Jesus is the model for my life.

It is my fervent hope and prayer this morning that
each of you is able to join me in making an affirmation like this.

Let us pray:

O God, we have not created You, but You have created us.  Grant us the faith to see
Your authority at work in Jesus, and give us the resolve to model our lives on his.   
Amen.

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